Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our “2000 AD” weekly review column! Every Wednesday we examine the latest offerings from Tharg and the droids over at Rebellion/2000 AD, the galaxy’s leading producers of Thrill-Power entertainment. Let’s get right to it!
THIS WEEK IN 2000AD
Judge Dredd: The Harvest Part 1
Michael Carroll (script), Nick Perceval(art), Annie Parkhouse(letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘The Harvest’ opens with a the latest in a string of grisly murders where the murderer is collecting the body part from their victims. The Judge on the case, Temple, has called in Dredd because of strangeness in the details of the case and the apparent extraordinary abilities of the killer. We are treated to a list of grizzly events both in the text and “on screen” as the story progresses, given its body horror nature mixed with the art its effectively unsettling.Carroll does little to establish any kind of feeling of the majority of the victims and that leads the story to feel perfunctory and flat. Either we don’t know them at all or we know them as possibly morally compromised. If anything the only character that we feel something for is the woman who gets sentenced to the cells for her unlicensed firearm. It’s a lot of set up and may have a pay off down the line, only the chapters progression will tell. This arc hits the road running feeling like a NCIS, Bones, or Criminal Minds episode, there is a horrible string of events and we’re not really far enough in to be hooked.
Nick Perceval’s art leans into realism and gives a grisly fell to the story even when he’s chosen to show the victims. The stylistic choices lend the strip to feeling like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner with its misty grey tones and gives a solid great first impression. His art is so well executed it ps hard not to feel disturbed by the images. The style overall has a lot in common with the recent “Fall of Deadworld” storyline and it’s well effective in creating mood with it muted grey overtones pallet. Though effective in that, Perceval’s characters have an uncanny valley off putting kind of feeling. They are a bit to corpse-like in appearance to them even if they are not yet dead. Its a solid style choice, and a highly effective one but a hard one to find overall appealing.
Defoe: The Divisor Part 9
Credits Pat Mills(script) S.K. Moore(art) Ellie De Ville(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: As is often the case with this strip, things could be going a little bit better for Defoe. Luckily “could be going a little better” still means Defoe’s master plan is still intact. His great plan, blow Irdonozur up in space away from Earth and the potential to infect more people and before he reaches the moon and resurrects to full strength like Space Mumm-Ra.
The previous strip had a grandiosity and spectacle to it. While there wasn’t splash pages like the launch sequence pages it evoked that same feeling. The ninth part of ‘Divisor’ plays in a similar key but with a more functional tone as artist S.K. Moore uses the page to track our band of misfits through the zombie infested corridors of the Britannia. The initial into the breach page is controlled chaos, but the following page as they decend a set of stairs as if they were dungeon diving is beautiful. The main central image tracks our party going down through the stairs with a couple of insert panels to highlight a kill. Moore’s use of grey to capture the washed out quality of the hanging lamps adds to the mood and helps the readers eye navigate the page. These pages of tracking their progress creates this feeling of propulsion and hope as they search for Kearney.
Without that sense of propulsion and hope the cliff hanger to this strip wouldn’t be nearly as effective. It gets you to emotionally buy in that maybe things will work out, mostly, according to plan. But as I said at the top, things could be going better for this squad on the final page. This is the right kind of strip for the series as it enter the final stages of the run.
Continued below
Brink: Hate Box, Part Nine
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Inj Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: We finally see a little bit of authority come down on Bridget’s cavalier act in the latest installment of “Hate Box”. This kind of office banter is much more entertaining than the first few chapters, as we see the ‘charming’ personality of the Habitat’s Commissioner Fernan. Abnett uses the Hate Box well here as it even taxes Fernan every time he swears, which happens frequently enough to show readers how little this guy cares for making nice. Later on, having Bridget and Adriene discuss the events at the bar and the case of Bridget’s father’s death does a nice bit of relationship building between the two that I wouldn’t have expected earlier in the story. The interaction between them and the bartender through the Hate Box also makes for some nice narrative setting work, as well as light comedic relief to end the prog on.
Culbard does a lot of great emotional acting in this prog, rendering a range of wildly different characters looking all unique. Fernan is the obvious point to start on, to which I have to say Culbard does an excellent short and angry man type. The facial subtleties are there to the point we can tell his level of anger just from diminishing his mouth size or the angle of lines on his face. What Culbard does with Adriene is also excellent during the bar scene. She cycles from being a disgruntled older worker to being smarmy and cunning fairly naturally, and even the way she leans in on Bridget does a lot to depict her attitude. Culbard does some great colors in this scene too, with the main bar table being lit a bright orange and reflecting on Bridget and Adriene’s faces to give the whole scene a new age-seedy tone.
Part Nine of Hate Box continues to push Bridget’s narrative and build her relationships with co-workers, showing both creators’ strong abilities to develop a character over a relatively short amount of time.
The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 9
Credits: Kek-W (script), Dave Kendall(art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: “The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 9” gives the people following this story a new feeling, a feeling that has been noticeably absent over the course of this entire morbid story: hope.
It’s also the first time this storyline hasn’t appeared as the last story in its particular prog. Not that it was ever a bad thing, it’s just interesting.
Writer Kek-W uses “The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 9” to give the characters who are still among the living the chance to recover and reorganize after being nearly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of living dead. The invading Sov force is somehow still alive and is starting to get its act together, while the surviving Judges and mutants of the Mega City manage to actually strike a blow against the enemy and give themselves a small glimmer of hope. It’s not the most action packed or interesting part of the story, but it continues the string of great writing and helps the audience relate to the characters and want to root for them in their infernal war against the dead.
As for the artwork, there are only so many ways to say that Dave Kendall’s artwork is amazing. Once again, the story isn’t really in a place that would allow Kendall to cut loose and unleash the full potential of his art style, but there is a really cool panel that shows a couple of psychics having a battle of the minds and the Sov commandos are appropriately course, brutal, and proudly represent the finest Slavic stereotypes.
“The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 9” continues to showcase some very good writing by changing the pace and tone of the story a little bit to give the living good guys a small bit of hope. While it’s a tiny bit frustrating that this story seems to be on a slow burn, it promises to make the finale all the sweeter.
Hope, Under Fire Part 9
Credits: Guy Adams (script), Jimmy Broxton (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Gustavo S. Lodi: After a couple of chapters, it is now clear that “Hope” struggles with its own pacing. What could have been an interesting permeation of themes and characters, end up being an exercise of keeping track of everything that is going on. It is a shame, but there is a very compelling story buried in the narrative.
First of all, the art remains fantastic. Braxton manages to keep the movement on each page, despite his more realistic approach to facial expression and backgrounds. Nothing feels stale or static, which is particularly useful on the more action oriented scenes later on this chapter.
The main story beats are interesting as well. The utilisation of a magical, demonic creature for mafia purposes leads to curious situations. However, it fails to expand beyond the “big weapon owned by a big bad,” so it is not that different from many stories that can have a scenario of great power bestowed upon an evil being.
To make matters worse, the main protagonist take a complete backseat to a narrative role, which is further jarring from the pacing beats to this point.
At this stage, “Hope” remains a beautiful book, filled with promising ideas… that unfortunately fail to connect with that promise.
